Tuesday morning musings

I can only hope that some day I may be as clever as was Erma Bombeck, humorist, whose columns were funny at times but at others, thoughtful and incisive. Or that I were Valerie Harper’s Rhoda Morgenstern of the “Mary Tyler Moore” show, who with her ever-present head scarf was the sassy, funny, advice-giving neighbor to Mary.

Erma died in April 1996, from complications incurred after a liver transplant. Earlier, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery for a mastectomy.

Coincidentally, she and I share two things: Her middle name was Louise and we were both U of D alumnae. She was graduated from the University of Dayton and I from the University of Detroit.

In 2013, Harper was diagnosed with brain cancer and had been given anywhere from three months to years of survival. She is currently under- going chemotherapy treatment; in an interview in People magazine she is quoted as saying that she’s not focused on dying because “I think of being here now.” According to doctors, her humor continues to sustain her.

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Erma’s and Rhoda’s (Harper’s) names came up for discussion during the tri-annual meeting at Ruby Tuesday of the FFF (Four [or Five, depending on the season] Friendly/Fabulous Females). The conversation revolved around embarrassing situations and ended with the question, “Would you have said something?”

Two of us recalled seeing women with panty hose trailing behind them. One of our members had been in line at a fast-food restaurant when she heard others in the queue snickering. The woman who was two customers ahead of our storyteller was trying to give her food order at the counter but the young server kept trying, unobtrusively, to get her attention by pointing downward to his customer’s left side. The woman did not respond so he leaned over the counter and in a husky whisper said, “Ma’m, look at what’s trailing you.” With a gasp, and a hasty tug at the waistband of her slacks, she removed the offending tail and stuffed it into her handbag.

She thanked the young man, smiled shyly, and moved to the end of the counter to await her hamburger with mustard and onion and a senior cup of coffee.

Undoubtedly, some of us have been victims of the attached toilet tissue episode but the following tells of a really embarrassing moment, according to one of our FFF members.

It happened that one of the church’s choir members began to feel a bit queasy so she left the choir loft and made her way to the restroom. After a while, unaware that her skirt was caught in the waist of her undergarment, she walked toward the choir. Three pews shy of the front of the church, a Good Samaritan jumped out and tapped the choir member on her shoulder, whispered in her ear and then stood directly behind her while she righted the mishap.

Many years ago, one of our professors told me about his embarrassing moment: He was at a hotel for a conference meeting that would include breakfast so he awoke early, showered, dressed, and took the elevator down to the ground floor where breakfast was to be served and the meeting was to be held.

His elevator-mates were friendly and smiled at him. Several of them exited the elevator, as did he. Hotel guests gathered in the lobby, stopped their conversations to smile as he walked by. As he passed the gift shop, he stopped to glance at the display in the window and caught himself reflected in the glass -- still wearing his shower cap. Hastily, he pulled off the cap, pitched it into a nearby trash receptacle, patted down his damp hair, and proceeded into the breakfast room.

After the stories, we talked about what we would do if we saw someone in an embarrassing situation and, what our reaction would be if the situation were reversed. We agreed that, in the first instance, we would alert the “victim;” in the second, we would be grateful for the tap on the shoulder.

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On January 21, as I raised the blinds on a south-facing upstairs window, I startled a flock of black birds (Grackles? Starlings?) who flew away. Left to savor the berries on the tree outside the window was a ROBIN! He is probably a Michiganian who didn’t fly south at the first snowflake. He made a good day for me.